HUGH  WALPOLE 


AN    APPRECIATION 


JOSEPH  HERGESHKIMKR 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE      H.      DOBAN      COMPANY 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


HUGH    WALPOLE 
An    Appreciation 

JOSEPH     HERGESHEIMER 


BOOKS  BY  HUGH  WALPOLE 

NOVELS 

THE  WOODEN  HORSE 

MR.  PERRIN  AND  MR.  TRAILL 

THE  GREEN  MIRROR 

THE  DARK  FOREST 

THE  SECRET  CITY 

ROMANCES 

THE  PRELUDE  TO  ADVENTURE 

FORTITUDE 

THE  DUCHESS  OF  WREXE 

MARADICK  AT  FORTY 

BOOKS  ABOUT  CHILDREN 

THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 
JEREMY 

BELLES-LE  TTRES 

JOSEPH  CONRAD:  A  CRITICAL  STUDY 


HUGH     WALPOLE 

An  Appreciation 

by 
JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER 

Author  of  "Three  Black  Pennyi" 
"Java  Head",  etc. 


Together  with  Notes 

and  Comments  on  the  Novels  of 

Hugh  Walfiole 


NEW  NISIr  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1919 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Colleg* 
Library 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

An  Appreciation 
JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER 


T  T  is  with  an  uncommon  feeling  of  gratifi- 
•*-  cation  that  I  am  able  to  begin  a  paper 
on  Hugh  Walpole  with  the  words,  in  their 
completest  sense,  an  appreciation.  But  this 
rises  from  no  greater  fact  than  a  personal 
difficulty  in  agreeing  with  the  world  at  large 
about  the  most  desirable  elements  for  a 
novel.  Here  it  is  possible  to  say  that  Mr. 
Walpole  possesses  almost  entirely  the  quali- 
ties which  seem  to  me  the  base,  the  absolute 
foundation,  of  a  beauty  without  which  crea- 
tive writing  is  empty.  In  him,  to  become 
as  specific  as  possible,  there  is  splendidly 
joined  the  consciousness  of  both  the  inner 
and  outer  worlds. 

And,  for  a  particular  purpose,  I  shall  put 
my  conviction  about  his  novels  into  an  arbi- 
trary arrangement  with  no  reference  to  the 
actual  order  of  appearance  of  his  dignified 
row  of  volumes.  Such  a  choice  opens  with 
a  consideration  of  what  is  purely  a  story 
[  3  ] 


126540S 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

of  inner  pressures,  it  continues  to  embrace 
books  devoted  principally  to  the  visible 
world,  to  London,  and  ends  with  a  mingling 
of  the  seen  and  unseen  in  Russia. 

Yet,  to  deny  at  once  all  pedantic  pretense, 
it  must  be  made  clear  that  my  real  concern 
is  with  the  pleasure,  the  glow  and  sense  of 
recognition,  to  be  had  from  his  pages.  The 
evoked  emotions,  which  belong  to  the  heart 
rather  than  the  head,  are  the  great,  the  final, 
mark  of  the  true  novelist.  And  they  may  be, 
perhaps,  expressed  in  the  single  word,  magic. 
Anyone  who  is  susceptible  to  this  quality 
needs  no  explanation  of  its  power  and  im- 
portance, while  it  is  almost  impossible  of 
description  to  those  upon  whom  it  has  no 
effect.  It  is  quite  enough  to  repeat  it  ... 
magic.  At  once  a  train  of  images,  of  memo- 
ries of  fine  books,  will  be  set  in  motion. 
Among  them  the  father  of  Peter  Westcott 
will  appear — a  grim  evil  in  a  decaying  house 
heavy  with  the  odor  of  rotten  apples;  and, 
accompanying  them,  the  mind  will  be  flooded 
with  the  charmed  moments  of  Mr.  Wai- 
pole's  descriptions:  Russian  nights  with 
frozen  stars,  rooms  swimming  placid  and 
strange  in  old  mirrors,  golden  ballrooms  and 
[  4  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

London  dusks,  the  pale  quiver  of  spring,  of 
vernal  fragrance,  under  the  high  sooty  glass 
dome  of  a  railroad  station. 

In  this,  at  once,  the  remarkable  delicacy 
of  his  perceptions  is  made  apparent:  it  is 
impossible,  in  thinking  of  these  books,  to 
separate  what  occurs  in  the  sphere  of  reality 
from  the  vivid  pressures,  the  dim  forces, 
that,  lying  back  of  conscious  existence,  are 
always  gathering  like  portentous  storms  be- 
hind Mr.  Walpole's  stories.  To  have  stated 
so  calmly  his  passionate  belief  in  just  these 
influences  was,  at  the  time  most  of  his  books 
were  written,  an  act  of  that  courage  he  has  so 
persistently  extolled.  Yet  the  details  of  his 
fortitude  belong  properly  to  the  examina- 
tion of  individual  novels. 

Time,  however,  has  altogether  justified 
his  spiritual  preoccupations :  the  literature  of 
the  surface  of  things,  the  sting  of  onions  in 
a  glittering  tin  bowl,  aesthetic  boys — still  the 
wistful  ghost  of  Wilde,  the  flaneur — dragged 
through  the  pages  of  Freud,  unlimited  sen- 
tences in  sociology  hardly  humanized  by  a 
tagging  of  proper  names  and  mechanical  de- 
sires, have  been  swept  into  the  dust-bin  for 
temporary  reactions  and  fevers.  Nothing 
[  5  ] 


can  be  gained  by  speculation  about  the  future, 
it  is  enough  to  realize  that,  in  imaginative 
letters,  the  school  of  arrogant  materialism 
has  been  discredited;  and  that  Mr.  Walpole, 
because  of  his  steadiness  in  the  face  of 
skeptical  and  mocking  devils,  has  easily,  se- 
curely, entirely,  survived  the  most  blasting 
and  calamitous  ordeal  men  have  had  yet  to 
meet. 

His  books,  from  the  first  to  the  last,  have 
not  become  antiquated;  they  are  as  fresh  to- 
day as  they  were  at  any  time  through  the 
past  ten  or  twelve  years ;  the  people  in  them, 
true  in  costume  and  speech  to  their  various 
moments,  are  equally  true  to  that  which  in 
man  is  changeless.  They,  the  novels,  are  at 
once  provincial,  as  the  best  novels  invariably 
are,  and  universal  as  any  deep  penetration 
of  humanity,  any  considerable  artistry,  must 
be.  Never  merely  cosmopolitan,  never 
merely  smart — even  in  his  knowledge  of 
smart  people — they  are  sincere  without  be- 
ing stupid,  serious  without  a  touch  of  hypoc- 
risy; and  on  the  other  hand,  light  without 
vapidity,  entertaining  with  never  a  compro- 
mise nor  the  least  descent  from  the  most 
dignified  of  engagements. 
[  6  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

All  this,  on  the  plane  to  which  I  am  con- 
fined— the  pleasure  to  be  had  from  accumu- 
lated words — is  as  rare  as  it  is  delightful. 
The  world,  particularly  the  world  of  novel- 
writing,  is  choked  with  solemn  pretensions 
and  sly  lies;  it,  the  latter,  is  the  fertile  field 
of  all  the  ignorances — the  dogmatic,  the 
degenerate,  the  hysterical,  the  venal.  And, 
unhappily,  there  seems  to  be  very  nearly  a 
public  for  each;  unhappily  the  deeply  bitten 
prejudices  of  men,  the  secretive  hopes  of 
women,  control  to  an  amazing  degree  their 
opinions  of  the  one  medium — the  written 
story — that  should  be  kept  superior  to  all 
pettiness  as  a  resource  solely  of  alleviation. 

Usually  great  creative  writers — gifted, 
together  with  pity,  with  clarity  of  vision — 
have  dealt  in  a  mood  of  severity  with  life; 
they  are  largely  barred,  by  their  covenant 
with  truth,  from  the  multitude;  but  Mr. 
Walpole,  not  lacking  in  the  final  gesture  of 
greatness,  has  yet  the  optimism  that  sees 
integrity  as  the  master  of  the  terrors.  Liter- 
ature, different  from  painting  and  music, 
serves  beauty  rather  by  the  detestation  of 
ugliness  than  in  the  recording  of  lyrical 
felicities.  But,  again,  Mr.  Walpole  has 
[  7  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

countless  passages  of  approval,  of  verbal 
loveliness,  that  must  make  him  acceptable  not 
only  to  a  few  but  to  many. 

In  reading,  for  example,  The  Secret  City, 
there  is  the  satisfaction  of  realizing  that  the 
consequent  enjoyment  rises  from  an  unques- 
tionably pure  source.  It  is  a  preoccupation 
to  be  followed  with  utter  security — for  once 
an  admirable  thing,  a  fine  thing,  is  altogether 
pleasurable. 

II 

Mr.  Walpole's  courage  in  the  face  of  the 
widest  skepticism  is  nowhere  more  daring 
than  in  The  Golden  Scarecrow.  The  book 
itself,  in  both  conception  and  composition, 
presented  extraordinary  difficulties;  one  of 
those  themes  clear  enough  in  the  creative 
mind,  but  so  deep  in  implication,  so  veiled 
in  mystery,  so  elusive  psychologically,  that  to 
put  it  at  all  upon  paper  was  an  accomplish- 
ment of  very  high  order.  In  brief,  it  is 
founded  on  the  implication  that  children  born 
into  this  faulty  world  retain,  for  varying 
short  periods,  memories  of  a  serene  existence 
from  which  they  were  banished  into  human 
consciousness.  This  remembrance  is  em- 

[  8  1 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

bodied  in  the  appearance,  in  dim  rooms, 
against  the  sunset,  in  the  mists  of  beginning 
sensations,  of  a  kindly  protecting  shape  with 
a  beard.  The  vision  is  all  tenderness  and 
gentle  melancholy  wisdom  ...  Christ! 

The  particular  danger  in  such  a  narrative 
is  the  almost  inescapable  shadow  of  me- 
chanical sentimentality.  The  conjunction  of 
Christ  and  little  children  is  perfectly  safe  to 
evoke  of  itself  the  tear  of  ready  sympathy; 
and  miracles,  from  the  beginning  to  the  late 
Irish  school  and  later,  have  been  the  chosen 
medium  for  a  useful  and  easy  squeezing  of 
the  heart.  But,  it  should  be  said  at  once, 
The  Golden  Scarecrow  is  remarkably  free 
from  the  merely  easy,  or  from  cheaply  bor- 
rowed pathos.  It  is  sustained  not  only  by 
beautiful  phrasing,  delicate  imagery,  but 
equally  by  an  iron  rod  of  truth.  If  the  vision 
exists,  clad  in  splendor  invisible  to  anything 
but  innocence,  so  too  does  the  world  Mr. 
Walpole  clearly  sees  and  correctly  grasps. 

He  knows  that,  while  there  may  be  a 
Saviour  for  purity  in  txcra-mundane  spheres, 
in  London  there  is  no  such  security:  there 
is  always  the  ugly  possibility,  no — proba- 
bility, of  accident,  of  the  destruction — by 
[  9  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

cruelty  or  envy  or  vice  or  sheer  careless- 
ness— of  youth.  In  addition  to  this  The 
Golden  Scarecrow  gathers  importance  with 
the  increasing  recognition  of  the  extreme 
importance  of  the  impressions  of  childhood. 

Addressing,  with  his  surprising  and  justi- 
fied confidence,  the  instincts  of  the  newly- 
born,  he  follows  the  human  mind  opening 
gradually  to  the  spectacle  of  living.  The 
progress  is  established  by  a  succession  of 
episodes,  of  stories  really,  bound  into  a 
whole  by  a  return,  at  the  book's  end,  to 
its  beginning  statement  and  mood,  and  by  a 
single  passionate  conviction.  It  is  this,  cer- 
tainly, which  gives  Mr.  Walpole  his  force 
and  beauty — the  ability  to  deliver  himself 
of  a  high  hatred  tempered  by  pity.  In 
The  Golden  Scarecrow  his  resentment  has 
for  incentive  the  fatalities  brought  by  chance 
or  design  on  beings  endowed  with  the  finest 
possibilities. 

The  arrangement  of  his  novels  places  this 
among  Studies  in  Place;  and  the  scene  is 
principally  March  Square,  not  far  from 
Hyde  Park  Corner.  There  lingers  about  it 
the  atmosphere  of  the  days  of  St.  Anne,  a 
tranquillity  hardly  disturbed  by  the  din  of 
[  10  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

London;  and  its  bricks  and  greenery,  its 
fountain  and  statues,  one  commemorating 
a  general  of  the  Indian  Mutiny  and  the 
other  a  mid-Victorian  figure,  are  the  last 
to  hold  the  strains  of  mendicant  street 
musicians.  To  these  are  added  the  cries 
of  children  at  their  games,  garlands  of 
children  on  the  smooth  lawn  and  under  the 
overhanging  trees,  and,  from  around  the 
corner,  the  bells  of  St.  Matthew's. 

Each  part  has  for  its  central  figure  a 
child  of  one  of  the  houses  surrounding  the 
Square,  from  the  three-months-old  Henry 
Fitzgeorge,  Marquis  of  Strether,  son  of 
the  Duchess  of  Crole,  to  young  John  Scar- 
lett, the  offspring  of  a  solid  K.  C.,  about  to 
leave  home  for  the  adventure  of  public 
school.  But  there  is-,  in  the  range  of  the 
book,  the  greatest  possible  diversity  of 
children  and  houses:  'Enery,  the  simple- 
witted  son  of  Mrs.  Slater,  care-taker  for 
Old  Lady  Cathcart  at  No.  21;  Nancy  Ross, 
daughter  of  Munty,  of  potted  shrimp  fame, 
in  danger  of  being  turned  by  an  impossible 
mother  into  an  impossible  Dresden  china 
figure,  but  saved  by  her  ugly  black  little 
father;  Sarah  Trefusis,  living  in  a  smart 

[11  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

little  house  with  green  doors  and  with  a  wid- 
owed mother  of  the  loveliest  and  most  un- 
scrupulous of  eyes,  Sarah  possessed  of  a 
sinister  devil;  Angelina,  who  would  say 
"Wosy"  when  she  meant  Rose,  and  in- 
furiated her  two  neat  aunts  with  rather 
yellow,  squashed-looking  faces. 

It  is,  perhaps,  to  Angelina  Braid,  that  the 
memory  most  persistently  returns;  for  in 
the  direct  story  of  Angelina  and  the  rag 
doll  she  adored  above  all  others — Rachel 
and  Lizzie,  two  Annies,  a  Mary,  a  May,  a 
Blackmoor,  a  Jap,  a  Sailor,  and  a  Baby  in 
a  Bath — Mr.  Walpole  has  gathered  all  his 
art  and  fury.  In  it  hard  meanness,  petty 
destructive  tempers,  meagreness  of  heart, 
are  exposed  so  utterly  that  it  is  difficult  to 
suppose  anyone,  reading  it,  could  ever  again 
support  the  oppression  of  a  child.  The  epi- 
sode of  Angelina  Braid  is  told  with  the 
utmost  restraint,  its  means  are  simple,  in- 
evitable; but  its  conveying  of  irrevocable 
harm,  of  the  spirit  fluttering  away  from  the 
rigidity  of  flesh,  is  matchless. 

As   a  whole   The   Golden   Scarecrow   is, 
considering  its  heart  of  mystery,  amazingly 
coherent  and  satisfactory.     From  the  open- 
[  12  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

ing  paragraphs,  when  Hugh  Seymour,  a 
lonely  imaginative  boy,  is  mentally  bullied 
by  a  stolid  school-master,  to  the  last  where, 
a  man,  he  regains  the  voice  of  his  Friend, 
that  Friend  of  before-birth,  the  book  is  a 
living  entity.  Of  the  golden  scarecrow: 

"To  their  left  a  dark  brown  field  rose  in 
an  ascending  wave  to  a  ridge  that  cut  the 
sky.  .  .  .  The  field  was  lit  with  the  soft 
light  of  the  setting  sun.  On  the  ridge  of 
the  field  something  suspended,  it  seemed,  in 
mid-air,  was  shining  like  a  golden  fire. 

"  'What's  that,'  said  Mr.  Pidgen  again. 
It's  hanging.  What  the  devil!' 

"They  stopped  for  a  moment,  then  started 
across  the  field.  When  they  had  gone  a 
little  way  Mr.  Pidgen  paused  again. 

"  'It's  like  a  man  with  a  gold  helmet. 
He's  got  legs,  he's  coming  to  us.' 

"They  walked  on  again.  Then  Hugh 
cried,  'Why,  it's  only  an  old  scarecrow. 
We  might  have  guessed.' 

"The  sun,  at  that  instant  sank  behind  the 
hills  and  the  world  was  grey." 

It  was,  visibly,  but  an  old  scarecrow, 
with  waving  tattered  sleeves  and  a  tin  can 
that  held  the  light;  but  it  had  been,  as  well, 
[  13  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

a  man  in  a  golden  helmet.  He  had  come 
toward  them.  That,  in  a  sentence,  expresses 
Mr.  Walpole's  magic:  we  see  the  rags  and 
the  tin;  and  we  see,  too,  the  heavenly  shin- 
ing; which  is  the  reality  he  leaves,  as  he 
must,  for  our  determining. 

Ill 

In  no  other  novel  of  Mr.  Walpole's  are 
the  forces  that — perhaps — lie  back  of  life 
so  explicitly  expressed  as  in  The  Golden 
Scarecrow,  while,  of  all  his  books,  The 
Green  Mirror  is  most  frankly  concerned 
with  terrestrial  existence.  It  is  the  second  in 
a  plan  of  three  called  The  Rising  City, 
not,  he  is  careful  to  inform  us,  a  trilogy. 
Indeed,  English  society,  in  the  broad  sense, 
placed  in  London,  is  the  subject  of  this 
series;  beyond  the  introduction  in  The 
Green  Mirror  of  a  few  names  made  famil- 
iar by  The  Duchess  of  Wrexe,  the  novels 
have  no  actual  intercommunication. 

They  were,  however,  clearly  led  up  to  in 
other  pages,  notably  Fortitude;  but  there 
the  dark  shapes,  like  embodied  evil  pas- 
sions, were  always  gathering  about  the  rim 
of  consciousness.  But  The  Green  Mirror, 
[  14  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

except  in  minor  incidences,  completely  illus- 
trates the  spirit  in  flesh.  This  it  does  de- 
lightfully with,  and  this  is  surprising,  a 
most  entertaining  humor.  Aunt  Aggie  is 
one  of  the  old  embittered  women  that  Mr. 
Walpole  understands  so  thoroughly;  but,  in 
The  Green  Mirror,  he  is  more  lenient  with 
her  than  usual.  He  follows  her  mind,  a 
mind  like  the  thin  scraping  jangle  of  a 
worn-out  music-box,  with  an  amazing  flexi- 
bility and  insight;  the  latter,  in  his  consid- 
eration of  Aunt  Aggie,  predominates.  Un- 
derstanding, of  course,  dissipates  hatred:  in 
the  completed  picture  of  ancient  malicious- 
ness, positively  wicked  in  intention,  the 
reader  is  continually  cheered  by  perception 
of  the  true,  the  rare,  Comic  Spirit. 

But  she,  Aunt  Aggie,  is  comparatively 
unimportant;  the  weight  of  The  Green 
Mirror  is  the  imponderable  weight  of  the 
Trenchard  family.  They  are  not  aristocrats, 
such  as  the  late  Duchess  of  Wrexe,  or 
Roddy  Seddon;  yet  Mr.  Walpole  makes  it 
clear  that,  essentially,  they  are  more  deeply 
rooted  in  tradition,  in  precedent,  than  a 
higher  and  largely  frivolous  class. 

Here,  more  than  by  George  Trenchard, 
[  15  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

the  head  of  this  branch  of  the  family,  they 
are  represented  by  his  wife,  the  mother  of 
Henry  and  Millicent  and,  above  all  else,  of 
Katherine.  They  are  shown  in  the  somber 
drawing-room  of  No.  5  Rundle  Square,  by 
Westminster  in  the  heart  of  London,  pass- 
ing and  repassing  in  the  aqueous  depths  of 
a  looking-glass  above  the  mantle : 

Mrs.  Trenchard,  heavy  and  placid  in  ex- 
terior; the  gangling  Henry,  incurably  dis- 
orderly and  racked  by  the  throes  of  green- 
sickness; Aunt  Aggie  and  Aunt  Betty, 
sparrow-like,  with  little  glints  of  cheerful- 
ness; Grandfather  Trenchard,  as  fragile  as 
glass  in  fastidious  silver  buckles;  and  Kath- 
erine. 

The  story  itself  is  the  relation  of  Kath- 
erine Trenchard's  love  for  Philip  Mark, 
and  how,  in  the  end,  it  smashed  the  green 
mirror  of  her  family.  While  it  is  that  in 
detail  it  is,  by  implication,  the  history  of 
the  breaking  of  old  English  idols.  This 
duality  of  being,  the  specific  and  the  sym- 
bolical is,  certainly,  almost  the  prime  neces- 
sity for  creative  literature;  and  in  the  pub- 
lished volumes  of  The  Rising  City  it  is 
everywhere  carried  out. 
[  16  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

Philip  Mark  arrives,  through  a  dense 
London  fog,  at  the  Trenchards'  during  the 
celebration  of  Grandfather  Trenchard's 
birthday — the  day,  above  all,  inalterably 
fixed  in  their  traditions.  He  is  from  Russia 
— Hugh  Walpole's  land  of  supreme  magic 
— and  his  coming  is  the  signal  for  small 
irritations,  growing  complexities,  jealousy, 
that  finally  set  the  individual  above  custom, 
the  present  over  the  past. 

Philip  Mark,  or  rather  the  love  of  Kath- 
erine  and  Philip,  is  the  cause  of  so  much; 
but  the  most  impressive,  the  most  important 
figure  in  the  book,  is  Katherine's  mother. 
This  is  a  familiar  arrangement  of  Mr. 
Walpole's;  to  erect  a  largely  silent  nega- 
tive force,  like  an  evil  and  sometimes  ob- 
scene carved  god  in  the  shadows,  and  op- 
pose to  it  the  tragic  vivid  necessity  of  youth. 
In  The  Green  Mirror  it  takes  the  shape 
of  maternal  jealousy — hard  for  all  its  ap- 
parent softness  of  bosom;  cruel  in  spite  of 
undeniable  affection,  cunning  as  against  an 
apparent  slowness  of  mentality. 

The  sweep  of  the  novel  is  rich  with  acute 
observation  and  borne  on  by  an  action  ris- 
ing— as  it  always  must — from  causes  at  once 
(  17] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

trivial,  informal,  and  inevitable.  Philip 
Mark's  past  in  Moscow,  continually  coming 
to  the  surface  by  the  utmost  diversity  of 
means  and  places;  now  threatening  his  hap- 
piness, now  a  foundation  for  his  maturity, 
furnishes  the  center  of  movement,  a  fact 
taken  up  as  a  weapon  or  justification  by 
nearly  everyone  in  turn.  This,  specially  to 
the  Trenchards,  is  of  monumental  dimen- 
sions; but  its  operation,  in  Henry's  unde- 
pendable  shirt-stud,  Aunt  Aggie's  agitated 
slap,  has  the  authentic  unheroic  accent  of 
reality. 

The  richness  of  The  Green  Mirror,  how- 
ever, has  its  inception  in  Mr.  Walpole's  ex- 
treme sensitiveness  to  the  spirit  of  place 
and  hour:  all  the  translations  of  his  action, 
the  changes  from  place  to  place,  day  to 
night,  are  recorded  with  a  beautiful  and 
exact  care.  This  is  the  result  of  a  pictorial 
sense  at  once  strong  and  delicate.  No  one 
has  had  more  delight  from  the  visible  world 
than  Mr.  Walpole,  and  none  has  been  able 
to  capture  it  better  in  words : 

"In  Dean's  Yard  the  snow,  with  blue 
evening  shadows  upon  it,  caught  light  from 
the  sheets  of  stars  that  tossed  and  twinkled, 
[  18  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

stirred  and  were  suddenly  immovable.  The 
Christmas  bells  were  ringing;  all  the  lights 
of  the  houses  in  the  Yard  gathered  about 
her  and  protected  her.  What  stars  there 
were!  What  beauty!  What  silence!" 

This  conveyance  of  a  crystal  mood,  with- 
out exotic  or  intricate  phrases,  without  orna- 
ment, is  the  mastery  of  an  art  that  must  be 
at  once  brushed  with  emotion  and  serene; 
in  it  lies  the  miracle  of  words,  inanimate 
fragments,  brought  warmly  to  life.  Kath- 
erine,  about  whom  they  were  written,  is  sen- 
tient as  well;  a  girl  stronger  in  the  end  than 
even  her  mother,  a  girl  who  bent  being  to 
her  will.  A  lovely  girl,  concealing  behind 
a  completely  feminine  need,  behind  clothes 
never  precisely  right,  Mr.  Walpole's  beloved 
courage. 

Here  particularly,  in  Katherine  Trench- 
ard,  the  individual  and  universal  humanity 
are  woven  one  into  the  other;  an  immeasur- 
ably greater  accomplishment  than  the  pro- 
jecting of  mere  eccentricity,  called,  I  be- 
lieve, by  the  doctors,  the  creation  of  char- 
acter. Anyone,  almost,  can  invent  a  set  of 
whiskers,  a  stuttering  speech,  write  imposing 
indignations  into  mechanical  masks;  but  only 
[  19  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

a  few  have  put  all  youth  into  a  girl  of  their 
imagination,  on  almost  no  pages  do  we  find 
the  truth  that  is  ourselves. 


IV 


For  Mr.  Walpole,  however,  the  dark  se- 
cret of  being  was  always  hidden  in  the  heart 
of  Russia.  It  has  been  his  land  of  enchant- 
ment, of  magic  and  desire;  and  it  possessed 
him  in  the  way  that  Shelley  and  Browning 
were  Italianate.  The  English  Merchant 
Marine  had  the  same  fascination  for  Mr. 
Conrad,  the  same  fascination  and  incalcula- 
ble influence.  Throughout  Hugh  Walpole's 
novels  there  is  the  persistent  turning  to  the 
dream  forests  and  night-ridden  cities  of 
Russia,  to  the  mingled  simplicity  and  inex- 
plicable complexity  of  its  men  and  women. 

Russia  presented  the  greatest  possible 
contrast  to  the  England,  the  English  he 
knew;  and,  although  Mr.  Walpole's  descrip- 
tions of  London  are  steeped  in  beauty,  he 
has  been  unable  to  find  there — even  in  the 
serenity  of  March  Square — any  such  crea- 
tive impulse  as  Petrograd  held  for  him. 

The  Russian  character,  too,  with  its  pc- 
[20] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

culiar  freedom  from  the  British  defects  that 
he  specially  hated,  offered  him  an  uncom- 
monly broad  means  of  expression  and  intel- 
ligibility. Philip  Mark's  years  in  Warsaw, 
his  mistress  there,  Anna,  formed  an  ideal 
background  for  the  utterly  different  purity 
of  Katherine  Trenchard.  So  it  was  inevita- 
ble that  Mr.  Walpole  should  invade  Russia 
not  only  with  the  spirit,  but,  as  well,  with 
the  body  of  his  books.  This,  of  course,  was 
brought  about  by  the  war,  and  resulted  in 
the  publication  of  The  Dark  Forest  and  The 
Secret  City. 

The  Dark  Forest  was,  in  many  ways,  a 
prelude  to  the  latter.  Semyonov,  the  doctor 
with  a  square,  honey-colored  beard,  the  fatal 
spirit  of  the  former,  accomplishes  his  final 
fatality  in  The  Secret  City;  the  narrator  of 
one  novel  is  the  narrator  of  the  other;  but 
in  The  Secret  City  a  great  deal  that  was 
nebulous — but  in  no  way  ineffective — is  ex- 
actly weighed  and  expressed. 

The  surprising  quality  of  The  Secret  City, 
and  which  makes  any  description  of  it  diffi- 
cult, is  that  while  it  is  a  tragedy,  it  is  no- 
where oppressive.  The  obvious  reason  for 
this  is  that  the  story  is  vividly  interesting — 

[  21  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

not  because  it  includes  a  remarkable  descrip- 
tion of  the  Russian  Revolution,  but  on  ac- 
count of  the  humanity  and  variety  of  its 
characters,  the  depth  of  emotion  and  bril- 
liancy of  surface.  In  reality,  the  Revolution 
constituted  a  very  serious  danger,  for  in  cre- 
ative fiction,  the  author,  the  novel,  must  be 
greater  than  the  event.  A  novel  holds  with- 
in its  covers  a  world  of  its  own,  a  complete 
reality  which,  for  the  moment,  must  take  the 
place  of  all  other  reality;  and  the  presence 
in  it  of  an  overwhelming  contemporary  event 
may  well  crush  the  illusion,  the  shining  ball, 
into  dull  fragments.  But  this  Mr.  Walpole 
avoids  in  his  concentration  upon  the  essen- 
tials of  his  purpose;  the  Revolution,  as  a 
fact,  fades  before  the  more  enduring  verac- 
ity, and  importance,  of  his  imagination. 

Vera  and  Nina,  the  fretted  Markovitch, 
and  Jerry  Lawrence,  tied  in  a  knot  of  pas- 
sion and  longing  and  bitterness,  now  strug- 
gling blindly  and  now  illuminated  with  dev- 
astating flashes  of  realization,  are  more 
compelling  than  the  accidents  of  wars  and 
shifting  governments.  They  are  the  human 
means  of  the  drama,  but — again — it  is  a 
pressure  lying  back  of  living  that  is  mainly 
[  22  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

important.  In  The  Secret  City,  Petrograd 
itself  controls  the  mood  of  the  action.  Mr. 
Walpole  has  seen  it  in  a  unity  of  tone  far 
more  perfect  than  his  grasp  of  London.  He 
sees  it  impressively  somber,  an  iron  city 
mostly  in  the  grip  of  winter,  its  blackness 
emphasized  by  glittering,  immaculate  snow, 
remote  and  thinly  pure  skies,  and  the  crystal 
stars  to  which  he  is  so  individually  sensitive. 
It  is,  in  The  Secret  City,  an  evil  place,  with 
bare,  wind-swept  files  of  apartment  houses, 
broad  avenues  emptied  by  the  staccato  rattle 
of  machine  guns  and  suffocating  slums  with 
dead  canals  stirred  with  the  vision  of  slow- 
rising,  scaly  monsters. 

Against  this,  however,  there  are  glimpses 
of  a  peasant,  a  symbolical  reality,  deeply 
bearded  and  grave  and  patient,  standing,  it 
might  be,  on  a  bridge  or  disappearing  into 
the  dark.  Yet  there  are  no  prophecies,  no 
auguries  of  a  future  regenerated  from  with- 
out. Mr.  Walpole  is  not  concerned  with  the 
temporary  plasters,  the  nostrums,  of  propa- 
ganda. He  rests  serene  in  the  novelist's 
isolation  from  small  responsibilities,  ad- 
dressed only  to  the  qualities  at  the  base  of 
humanity  from  which  current  fevers  rise. 
[23  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

And  here,  at  last,  he  has  combined  the 
inner  and  outer  pressures  of  which  I  spoke 
at  the  beginning.  While  it  is  true  that 
Petrograd  strikes  the  persistent  keynote  of 
The  Secret  City,  while  he  sees  monsters  stir- 
ring and  records  dreams  woven  into  the 
texture  of  actuality,  these  are  projections  of 
the  deep  significance  of  Lawrence  and  Mar- 
kovitch;  signs  and  visions  are  unnecessary 
with  their  complete -expression  of  the  states 
of  the  spirit.  Lawrence,  the  Englishman, 
slow,  fixed  in  honor  and  duty,  romantically 
pure,  and  the  Russian,  worn  by  doubt,  for- 
ever lost  in  the  waste  between  performance 
and  idea,  oppose,  perhaps,  in  little,  their 
countries.  Certainly  they  illustrate  Mr. 
Walpole's  own  questioning  and  offer  facts, 
entirely  convincing,  for  the  support  of  his 
intricate  structures. 

Semyonov,  who,  under  almost  any  other 
hand,  would  have  degenerated  into  a  mere 
villain,  is  presented  with  Mr.  Walpole's 
passion  for  entire  understanding,  that  com- 
prehension which  banishes  contempt.  Vastly 
intricate,  a  character  seen  on  a  hundred 
sides,  he  still  remains  intelligible,  consistent; 
a  consistency  which  permits  him  to  take 
[  24  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

naturally  his  place  in  a  story  at  once  in- 
volved and  simple.  He  is,  above  every- 
thing, a  spoiled  soul;  the  unhappiest  possible 
example  of  the  oil  of  heaven  arbitrarily  im- 
posed on  the  water  of  earth.  His  is  the 
agony  of  the  animal  confronted  with  the 
mysteries  of  the  spirit;  and  the  ruin  which 
emanates  from  his  torment  and  skeptical 
detachment  is  the  result  as  much  of  his  supe- 
riority as  of  his  fault. 

It  is,  more  than  anything  else,  the  fusion 
in  The  Secret  City  that,  at  the  time  of  its 
publication,  made  it  the  most  notable  of 
Mr.  Walpole's  novels.  As  a  story  it  is  en- 
thralling, the  mere  progress  of  the  action  is 
irresistible ;  the  atmosphere,  the  envelopment 
of  color,  is  without  a  rent,  a  somber  veil 
like  a  heavy  mist  subduing  the  flashes  of  red 
at  the  horizon,  muffling  the  sounds  and  glints 
of  passion,  absorbing  the  shouted  amtvtions 
of  men.  That  it  is  not  Russia,  but  himself, 
Mr.  Walpole  has  been  very  careful  to  point 
out;  it  is  simply  the  land  of  magic  to  which 
he  has  been  always  drawn,  and  which,  con- 
ceivably, having  explored,  he'll  leave,  re- 
turning to  England. 

[  25  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 
V 

As  a  whole,  Hugh  Walpole's  novels  main- 
tain an  impressive  unity  of  expression;  they 
are  the  distinguished  presentation  of  a  dis- 
tinguished mind.  Singly,  and  in  a  group, 
they  hold  possibilities  of  infinite  develop- 
ment. This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  most  clearly 
marked  in  their  superiority  to  the  cheap 
materialism  that  has  been  the  insistent  note 
of  the  prevailing  optimistic  fiction.  There  is 
a  great  deal  of  happiness  in  Mr.  Walpole's 
pages,  but  it  isn't  founded  on  surface  vul- 
garities of  appetite ;  the  drama  of  his  books 
is  not  sapped  by  the  automatic  security  of 
invulnerable  heroics.  Accidents  happen, 
tragic  and  humorous,  the  life  of  his  novels 
is  checked  in  black  and  white,  often  shroud- 
ed in  grey.  The  sun  moves  and  stars  come 
out;  youth  grows  old;  charm  fades;  girls 
may  or  may  not  be  pretty;  his  old  women — 

But  there  he  is  inimitable,  the  old  gentle- 
women, or  caretakers,  dry  and  twisted,  brit- 
tle and  sharp,  the  repositories  of  emotion — 
vanities  and  malice  and  self-seeking — like 
echoes  of  the  past,  or  fat  and  loquacious  with 
alcoholic  sentimentality,  are  wonderfully 
[  26  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

ingratiating.  They  gather  like  shadows, 
ghosts,  about  the  feet  of  the  young,  and  pro- 
vide Mr.  Walpole  with  one  of  his  main  re- 
sources— the  restless  turning  away  of  the 
young  from  the  conventions,  the  prejudices 
and  inhibitions,  of  yesterday.  He  is  singu- 
larly intent  upon  the  injustice  of  locking  age 
about  the  wrists  of  youth;  and,  with  him, 
youth  is  very  apt  to  escape,  to  defy  authority 
set  in  years  .  .  .  only  to  become,  in  time, 
age  itself. 

This,  of  course,  is  inescapable :  the  old  are 
the  old,  and  not  least  among  their  infirmities 
is  the  deadening  of  their  sensibilities,  the 
hardening  of  their  perceptions.  But  then, 
as  well,  the  young  are  the  young,  and  youth  is 
folly,  blind  revolt,  contumacy.  Here  is  per- 
petual drama  and,  with  it,  Mr.  Walpole's 
hatred  of  brutality  is  drawn  into  practically 
all  his  pictures  of  childhood,  as,  for  example, 
the  school  in  Fortitude. 

In  all  this  he  recognizes  clearly  that  beauty 
and  ugliness  are  twisted  into  the  fibre  of  man, 
they  are  man;  without  one  the  other  must 
cease — in  spite  of  the  contrary  legend — to 
exist.  Beauty  lies  in  struggle,  in  the  over- 
coming of  evil;  without  struggle  there  is  not 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

only  no  story,  there  is  no  fineness;  and  with- 
out evil  there  can  be  no  good.  Victory,  cer- 
tainly, is  not  unheard  of;  but  it  is  rare,  the 
result  of  amazing  courage,  strength,  or 
amazing  luck.  To  say  that  anyone,  almost, 
can  triumph  over  life,  that  temptation  is 
easily  cast  aside,  the  devil  denied  on  every 
hand,  is  one  of  the  most  insidious  lies  imagin- 
able. It  is  an  error  into  which  Hugh  Wai- 
pole  has  never  fallen;  the  progress  of  his 
books  has  been  an  increasing  recognition  of 
the  tragic  difficulty  of  any  accomplishment 
whatever;  and,  as  time  goes  by,  such  success 
becomes  smaller,  more  momentary,  and  more 
heroic. 

The  course  of  the  novelist  is  from  the 
bright  surface  of  life  inward  to  its  impene- 
trable heart,  from  the  striking  the  easy,  the 
lovely,  to  the  hopelessly  hidden  mystery  of 
being;  and  Mr.  Walpole  is  steadily,  perhaps 
unconsciously,  entering  the  profounder  dark- 
ness. It  is  a  march  practically  condemned  to 
failure  at  the  start;  but,  not  only  unavoidable, 
it  is  the  only  attempt  worth  consideration. 
Not  a  happy  fate,  God  knows,  to  leave  every- 
thing that  the  world,  that  people,  most  ap- 
plaud; there  is  no  possibility  of  mistake  about 
[  28  ]  ' 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

the  latter — the  beauty  that  is  truth  is  not  pop- 
ular in  a  society  which,  blind  to  its  transitory 
and  feeble  condition,  must  see  itself  as  the 
rulers  of  creation. 

Yet  this,  for  its  part,  is  entirely  commend- 
able, the  illusion  necessary  to  the  sustaining 
of  an  affair  difficult  at  best.  Novels  that  ring 
a  musical  chime  of  bells,  an  anodyne  for  the 
heart,  are  always  sure  of  their  welcome; 
they  represent  an  appreciation  in  the  dimen- 
sion of  width;  while  the  reception  of  The 
Secret  City  goes  rather  in  the  direction  of 
depth.  At  the  same  time  there  is  that  strange 
absence  of  oppression  already  noted,  a  story 
always  enjoyable  for  its  suspense,  the  play 
of  character  on  character. 

The  result  of  the  commingling,  in  Hugh 
Walpole,  of  the  seen  and  the  unseen!  If  he 
were  a  conventional  materialist  the  disasters 
to  the  flesh  would  be  unrelieved  tragedy,  his 
Roderick  Seddon,  paralyzed  for  life,  would 
be,  to  the  haphazard  mind,  unsupportable; 
but  Mr.  Walpole  manages  to  put  the  em- 
phasis on  Seddon's  spirit,  that  proves  to  be 
above  accident.  When  Markovitch,  at  the 
end  of  his  unendurable  suffering,  kills  Sem- 
yonov,  there  is  no  horror,  but  only  pity. 
[  29  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

The  novel,  of  course,  is  the  man;  and  the 
emotions  of  The  Secret  City  are  the  emotions 
of  Mr.  Walpole ;  it  is  merely  the  extension, 
by  an  art  and  a  record,  of  the  mind  of  its 
creator.  The  pity  of  the  reader  is  Mr.  Wai- 
pole's;  wherever  his  novel  goes,  wherever  it 
is  read,  if  there  is  any  response  it  is  one 
touched  with  dignity  and  wisdom.  There  is 
the  validity  of  the  superior  accomplishment, 
the  payment  for  the  failure  implied  in  the 
greater  undertaking:  the  recognition  of  the 
insignificant  novel  is  insignificant,  it  is  a  part 
of  the  life  flashing  for  a  moment  in  the  sun- 
light, dead,  forgotten,  by  evening.  But  if 
there  is  any  discoverable  solidarity  in  men, 
any  hope  of  final  escape  from  intolerable 
futility,  it  must  be  assisted,  if  ever  so  little, 
by  the  simple  honesty,  the  communication  of 
fortitude,  in  books  founded,  at  least,  on  what 
is  changeless,  inevitable,  to  living. 

When  these  qualities  form  the  pleasure  of 
the  multitude,  as  they  now  do  of  a  minority, 
the  world  will  be  a  vastly  different  and  better 
place.  Yet  this  is  not  primarily,  not  at  all, 
I  personally  feel,  Mr.  Walpole's  concern:  he 
is  the  carver  on  the  stone,  the  embellisher  on 
parchment;  his  art  is  the  sign,  the  recom- 
[  30  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

pense,  of  civilization.  He  is  the  pot  of  gera- 
niums in  the  window,  the  beauty,  utility, 
above  utility.  Not  for  nothing  do  we  allow 
the  philosophies,  the  doctrines,  even  the  hu- 
manities, of  the  past  to  fall  into  oblivion, 
while  we  preserve  any  marble  fragment  of 
beauty  we  are  so  fortunate  as  to  recover. 

Mr.  Walpole  is  a  part  of  that  great  neces- 
sity, of  the  longing,  really,  for  perfection, 
for  perfect  beauty.  This,  too,  is  the  only 
salvation  for  ease ;  the  animal,  when  he  is  re- 
plete, fat,  dies;  and  man,  successful  in  the 
flesh,  degenerates.  There  only  spirit,  beauty, 
animates  the  clay.  Roses,  in  the  end,  are 
more  important  than  cabbages.  Here,  Hugh 
Walpole,  cultivating  the  fine  flowers  of  his 
imagination,  setting  out  his  gardens  in  the 
waste,  is  indispensable  .  .  .  very  few  have 
accomplished  that. 


NOVELS  by  HUGH  WALPOLE 

Description    and    Comment 


THE    SECRET   CITY 

WHAT  is  the  secret  city  of  the  title?  Petro- 
grad?  Yes,  partly.  But  much  more  is  it 
the  citadel  of  the  Russian  proverb  which  recites: 
"In  each  man's  heart  there  is  a  secret  town  at 
whose  altars  the  true  prayers  are  offered!"  And 
so  what  we  have  in  this  book  before  us  is  first 
(and  always  foremost)  the  story  of  several  lives. 
Petrograd  itself,  with  its  insane  atmosphere  on 
the  eve  of  the  Revolution,  is  painted  for  us  per- 
sistently, with  many  patient  and  wonderful  brush 
strokes.  The  Revolution,  or  the  first  weeks  of  it, 
are  narrated  for  us  with  an  eyewitness's  veracity 
and  an  eyewitness's  incompleteness.  But  Petrograd 
and  the  Revolution  ...  all  that  .  .  .  are  put 
before  us  only  so  far  as  they  enter  into  the  lives  of 
a  few  people — a  family  of  Russians  and  three  cas- 
ual Englishmen.  Which  is  as  it  should  be.  Petro- 
grads  change,  revolutions  come  and  go;  but  the 
secret  city  of  the  human  heart  is  not  transformed. 
Human  motives  remain.  Human  passions  ebb  and 
flow.  Human  hopes  perish — and  are  reborn. 

The  people  of  Mr.  Walpole's  novel  are  com- 
pletely realized.    They  are  as  much  alive  as  if  they 
[  33  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

moved  in  the  flesh  before  you.  The  reader  may  be 
baffled  by  them — many  a  reader  will  be,  though  to 
most  readers  they  will  be  comprehensible  before 
the  closing  chapters.  But  baffling  or  not,  there  is 
no  disbelieving  in  them.  Two  of  the  most  impor- 
tant— Alexei  Petrovitch  Semyonov  and  John  Dur- 
ward,  the  narrator — are  characters  in  Mr.  Wai- 
pole's  earlier  novel,  The  Dark  Forest.  It  is  not 
absolutely  necessary  that  before  reading  The  Secret 
City  you  should  read  The  Dark  Forest,  but  it  is 
much  to  be  desired  that  you  do  so.  Otherwise  you 
will  be  unable  to  fathom  Alexei  Petrovitch  (the 
overshadowing  character)  as  adequately  as  you 
ought  to  from  his  first  entrance. 

But  about  the  others,  the  others  besides  the  sin- 
ister Alexei  Petrovitch.  Take  poor  old  Marko- 
vitch,  for  example.  It's  not  easy,  of  course,  to  see 
him  as  anything  but  a  self-befooled,  ridiculous  figure 
until  you  grasp  that  he  had  three  ideals  to  live  up 
to.  The  first  was  his  wife,  Vera;  then  there  were 
his  hopeless  inventions;  lastly,  there  was  Russia. 
Came  a  time  when,  as  young  Bohun,  one  of  the  Eng- 
lishmen, put  it:  "He'd  lost  Russia,  he  was  losing 
Vera,  and  he  wasn't  very  sure  about  his  inventions." 
At  the  last  he  clung  to  Russia,  hopefully.  This 
revolution  meant  something  wonderful  for  her — 
and  for  the  whole  world! 

Take  Vera,  beautiful  and  with  immortal  pride; 
with  a  great  and  candid  courage,  too.  She  had 

[  34  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

her  sister,  the  girlish  Nina,  she  had  her  husband. 
What  was  this  tragedy  of  love  that  came  to  her 
and  destroyed  everything?  Nina,  tempestuous, 
lovable,  like  a  child — why  in  the  name  of  all  that 
is  merciful  should  she  have  to  suffer  ?  Thank  God ! 
there  wras  a  happy  ending  here! 

Others — a  half  dozen  or  so — that  we  mustn't 
speak  of  singly.  Even  such  minor  characters  as 
Uncle  Ivan  and  Baron  Wilderling  are  etched  per- 
fectly. We  would  say  a  few  words  about  the 
background. 

Mr.  Walpole  makes  Petrograd  as  memorable  a 
city  as  does  Tolstoy  his  Moscow,  with  Napoleon 
gazing  upon  its  rounded  domes.  And  that  is  mem- 
orable indeed,  as  any  one  who  ever  read  War  and 
Peace  will  certify.  An  intensely  colorful  city, 
lighted  by  stars  and  bonfires,  exhaling  the  stink  of 
the  swamp  and  Rasputin's  corpse,  coldly  menaced 
by  the  frozen  Neva  River,  a  volcano  of  human  des- 
tiny with  its  thick  ice  melting  rapidly  from  the 
heat  of  terrible  flames  underneath.  A  city  where 
a  great  slimy  beast  seems  to  appear  apocalyptically 
from  the  sheeted  waters  of  the  canal.  A  city  where 
always  there  stands  silhouetted  against  the  evening 
glow  the  immense  figure  of  a  black-bearded  peas- 
ant, grave,  controlled,  thoughtful,  watching.  A  city 
of  dream — only  the  dream  is  true. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  about  it;  this  is  a  note- 
worthy book,  a  beautifully  written  book  and — what 

[  35  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

is  best  of  all — a  book  with  a  backbone.  You  may 
like  it  or  you  may  not;  you  will  be  unable,  we  be- 
lieve, to  withhold  admiration. — From  a  review  in 
The  New  York  Sun. 

"Hugh  Walpole  has  proved  his  right  to  eminence. 
The  Secret  City  is  a  worthy  successor  to  The  Dark 
Forest.  His  art  in  presentation  is  consummate.  But 
the  trait  that  stands  out  in  his  writings  is  his  hu- 
manity."— Chicago  Daily  News. 

"This  is,  we  believe,  Mr.  Walpole's  best  novel, 
a  finer  book  even  than  The  Dark  Forest.  Its  de- 
scriptive passages  are  many  of  them  superb ;  we  get 
the  sense  of  the  strange  and  alien  forces  lying  be- 
neath the  somewhat  Europeanized  surface  of  Petro- 
grad  in  a  truly  remarkable  way." — New  York 
Times. 

"It  is  one  of  Mr.  Walpole's  achievements  in  this 
book  that  along  with  his  philosophic  study  of  Rus- 
sian minds  and  matters,  he  maintains  a  running, 
throbbing  story  of  the  romance-tragedy  of  the 
Markovitch  home.  Its  form  and  style  confirm  it 
in  a  place  of  great  literary  distinction.  Being  the 
sort  of  book  one  desires  to  keep  as  well  as  to  read, 
it  sustains  the  final  test  of  a  fictional  work." — New 
York  World. 

"Hugh  Walpole  has  equalled  himself  at  his  best 
and  far  surpassed  himself  at  his  second  best.    A  novel 
of  the  rare  sort  that  is  meant  for  the  delight  of  dis- 
criminating readers." — Washington  Star. 
(  36  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

"The  best  recommendation  of  his  novel  is  its  ex- 
cellent quality  as  a  story:  its  absorbing  interest  in 
character." — Boston  Herald. 

"The  story  is  tensely  dramatic  in  its  incidents 
and  situations,  its  characters  are  real  and  interest- 
ing. .  .  .  You  cannot  merely  read  this  book,  for 
if  you  mean  to  keep  on  you  must  think  and  keep  on 
thinking." — San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"Mr.  Walpole  is  a  story-teller  with  something 
in  him  besides  fine  facility,  and  it  is  fascinating  to 
consider  this  excellent  example  of  his  work." — The 
New  Republic. 

"Somehow,  by  the  magic  of  his  words,  Mr.  Wal- 
pole, in  his  portrayal  of  a  people  in  the  process  of 
evolving,  makes  his  readers  understand  better  what 
has  taken  place  in  Russia  than  political  experts  in 
many  an  analytical  treatise." — Springfield  Union. 

"One  of  the  best  sustained,  most  continuously  in- 
teresting and  dramatic  stories  Mr.  Walpole  has 
written." — New  York  Globe. 

"It  is  his  best  work  as  a  piece  of  literature  and  it 
is  his  most  important  as  an  ethical,  sociological  and 
political  study." — New  York  Tribune. 

JEREMY 

F^HE    real    beauty,    tenderness    and    gaiety    of 

•*•    childhood  is  an  elusive  thing — too  elusive  often 

to   be   caught   and   pressed    into   words.      By   some 

magic  of  his  own   Hugh  Walpole  has  made  live 

[  37  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

again  in  Jeremy  the  childhood  that  we  all  knew 
and  that  we  turn  back  to  with  infinite  longing. 

With  affectionate  humorousness,  Mr.  Walpole 
tells  the  story  of  Jeremy  and  his  two  sisters,  Helen 
and  Mary  Cole,  who  grow  up  in  Polchester,  a 
quiet  English  Cathedral  town.  There  is  the  Jam- 
pot, who  is  the  nurse;  Hamlet,  the  stray  dog;  Uncle 
Samuel,  who  paints  pictures  and  is  altogether 
"queer";  of  course,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Cole,  and  Aunt 
Amy. 

Mr.  Walpole  has  given  his  narrative  a  rare 
double  appeal,  for  it  not  only  recreates  for  the  adult 
the  illusion  of  his  own  happiest  youth,  but  it  un- 
folds for  the  child-reader  a  genuine  and  moving 
experience  with  real  people  and  pleasant  things. 
No  child  will  fail  to  love  the  birthday  in  the  Cole 
household,  the  joyous  departure  for  the  sea  and  the 
country  in  the  long  vacation. 

"A  story  of  the  most  human  elements,  tender, 
witty,  penetrating  in  a  breath.  It  is  the  study  of 
one  year  in  a  boy's  life.  .  .  .  Mr.  Walpole  goes 
straight  to  the  heart  of  the  child  for  his  inspiration, 
and  never  strays  outside  the  narrow  limits  of  a 
child's  experience.  It  is  'the  real  thing,'  wonder- 
fully remembered,  and  most  sympathetically  and 
unaffectedly  recorded." — Daily  Telegraph. 


[  38  ] 


o 


HUGH    WALPOLE 
THE    DARK    FOREST 

UT  of  Russia,  where  Hugh  Walpole  had  been 
serving  with  the  Russian  Red  Cross,  came 
this  strange,  wonderful,  exotic  book,  containing  an 
inexplicable  treasure  of  beauty, — the  glamour  of 
the  Russian  forest,  the  scent  of  blossoming  orchards, 
the  wistful  heroism  of  young  Russian  soldiers.  The 
Dark  Forest  would  be  an  astonishing  performance 
if  only  in  this — that  Walpole  has  conceived  and 
written  a  Russian  novel  in  English.  But  there  are 
scenes  that  are  the  most  vividly  realized  moments 
of  which  Walpole  has  ever  written.  Scenes  which 
the  Westminster  Gazette  calls  "the  equal  of  the 
most  dramatic  passages  in  English  fiction."  Mys- 
tical, poetical,  spiritual,  the  theme  of  The  Dark 
Forest  is  the  triumph  of  the  soul  over  death.  One 
may  read  in  it  an  allegory  of  the  soul  of  Russia. 

"To  say  that  this  book  is  remarkable  is  only  to 
lay  hold  on  a  convenient  word  as  expressive  of  at 
least  a  part  of  the  sensation  the  story  produces. 
Here  is  a  book  for  which  many  of  us  have  dimly 
waited ;  a  book  that  transcends  the  outer  facts  and 
reveals  the  inner  significance  of  war.  The  Dark 
Forest  is  a  love  story  of  unusual  beauty,  as  well 
as  a  story  of  war.  Who,  having  read  it,  will  for- 
get this  book;  at  once  awful  and  beautiful?  It 
must  be  read,  for  neither  quotation  nor  description 
is  capable  of  giving  more  than  a  bare  hint  of  the 

[  39  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

nobleness,  the  intensity  of  this  work  of  art  so  deeply 
rooted  in  reality." — New  York  Times. 

"Of  all  the  novels  that  have  come  out  of  Euro- 
pean battlefields  there  is  probably  none  of  such 
scope,  such  penetrating  analysis  and  such  completely 
spiritual  quality  as  Hugh  Walpole's  Dark  Forest. 
It  is  many  novels  in  one.  .  .  .  It  is  instinct  with 
the  sense  of  spiritual  adventure.  It  is  young,  finely 
emotional,  stamped  with  the  consciousness  of  beauty 
and  infinity,  of  heroism  and  horror,  love  of  life  and 
the  vision  of  death." — Eleanore  Kellogg,  in  The 
Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"At  last  there  issues  a  novel  with  qualities  of 
greatness  and  the  promise  of  endurance.  Hugh 
Walpole's  Dark  Forest  should,  indeed,  as  a  work 
of  literary  art,  easily  survive  the  terror  and  the 
turmoil." — New  York  World. 

"Dostoievsky  compressed  within  a  few  pages.  A 
remarkable  book  indeed — beyond  doubt  the  most 
notable  novel  inspired  by  the  war." — New  York 
Tribune. 

"The  Dark  Forest  is  the  first  fine  story  product  of 
a  high  order  of  creative  art  we  have  had  from  the 
European  war." — Boston  Herald. 

"The  very  spirit  of  Russia  is  here.  This  is  un- 
usual. Walpole  appears  to  have  become  gifted  in 
a  few  months  with  the  true  Russian  literary  method. 
Its  magic  is  his." — Boston  Transcript. 

"It  is  a  story  of  sustained  power;  tragic  import 

[  40  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

and  impress,  and  careless  disregard  of  western  con- 
ventions. The  rapt  mysticism  and  unselfish  de- 
votion of  the  heroine;  the  downright,  uncompro- 
mising materialism  of  her  Russian  lovers ;  the 
pathetic  appeal  of  Trenchard's  loyalty,  and  the  situ- 
ation finally  developed  by  the  heroine's  untimely 
taking  off — these,  in  connection  with  the  continually 
recurring  episodes  of  grim  war,  afford  large  oppor- 
tunity for  originality  of  treatment  and  character- 
istic, forceful  dramatism."  —  Philadelphia  North 
Amercian. 

"Such  a  novel  needed  the  war  for  its  background. 
It  needed  the  war  for  its  origin.  It  could  only 
have  been  planned  on  the  battle  line.  It  could  be 
written  for  and  appreciated  by  only  such  an  audi- 
ence as  has  been  prepared  by  the  melancholy  of 
catastrophe.  War's  blood  is  in  it,  war's  nerves  and 
sinews.  It  is  the  very  soul,  upheaved,  bereft,  of 
war.  It  is  the  one  great  romance  that  has  come 
from  a  world  of  armies." — New  York  Evening  Sun. 

"The  Dark  Forest  is  a  novel  of  extraordinary 
beauty  and  power.  .  .  .  It  is  a  work  of  art,  un- 
qualifiedly a  great  book." — Review  of  Reviews. 

"Hugh  Walpole's  The  Dark  Forest  is  the  best 
story  yet  written  about  the  war  that  we  have  read." 
— New  York  Globe. 


[  41   ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

THE   GREEN    MIRROR 

THE  title  of   The   Green  Mirror  is  symbolic. 
In  the  drawing-room  of  the  London  house  of 
the  Trenchards,  not  far  from  Westminster  Abbey, 
it  represented  the  past  and  the  present  of  a  great 
and  typical  English  family. 

"Above  the  wide  stone  fireplace  was  a  large  old 
gold  mirror,  a  mirror  that  took  into  its  expanse  the 
whole  of  the  room,  so  that,  standing  before  it,  with 
your  back  to  the  door,  you  could  see  everything  that 
happened  behind  you.  The  mirror  was  old,  and 
gave  to  the  view  that  it  embraced  some  comfortable 
touch,  so  that  everything  within  it  was  soft  and 
still  and  at  rest."  Henry  Trenchard,  gazing  into 
it,  saw  "the  reflection  of  the  room,  the  green  walls, 
the  green  carpet,  the  old  faded  green  place,  like 
moss  covering  dead  ground.  Soft,  dark,  damp. 
.  .  .  The  people,  his  family,  his  many,  many  re- 
lations, his  world,  he  thought,  were  all  inside  the 
mirror — all  imbedded  in  that  green,  soft,  silent  in- 
closure.  He  saw,  stretching  from  one  end  of  Eng- 
land to  the  other,  in  all  provincial  towns,  in  neat 
little  houses  with  neat  little  gardens,  in  cathedral 
cities  with  their  sequestered  closes,  in  villages  with 
the  deep  green  lanes  leading  up  to  the  rectory  gar- 
dens, in  old  country  places  by  the  sea,  all  these  people 
happily,  peacefully  sunk  up  to  their  very  necks  in 
the  green  moss.  .  .  .  His  own  family  passed  be- 
fore him.  His  grandfather,  his  great-aunt  Sarah, 

[  42  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

his  mother  and  his  father,  Aunt  Aggie  and  Aunt 
Betty,  Uncle  Tim,  Millicent,  Katherine." 

Katherine  embodied  the  spirit  of  revolt  from  the 
tyranny  of  family.  When  Philip  Mark,  a  young 
Englishman,  who  has  spent  the  greater  part  of  his 
life  in  Russia,  and  whose  experiences  have  made 
him  more  Russian  than  English,  comes  wooing  in 
tempestuous  fashion,  she  throws  off  the  yoke  of  her 
family  and  chooses  for  herself.  It  is  when  the  ties 
of  family  are  about  to  be  shattered  that  Henry 
Trenchard,  in  a  fit  of  passion,  flings  a  book  at 
Mark,  the  invader,  who  has  shaken  Katherine's 
faith  in  the  family,  and,  instead  of  hitting  Mark, 
demolishes  the  mirror.  "There  was  a  tinkle  of  fall- 
ing glass,  and  instantly  the  whole  room  seemed  to 
tumble  into  pieces,  the  old  walls,  the  old  prints  and 
water  colors,  the  green  carpet,  the  solemn  bookcases, 
the  large  armchairs — and  with  the  room  the  house, 
Westminster,  Garth,  Glebeshire,  Trenchard  and 
Trenchard  traditions — all  represented  now  by  splin- 
ters and  fragments  of  glass." 

"The  Green  Mirror,  the  second  in  the  series  of 
the  Rising  City  series,  which  was  opened  by  The 
Duchess  of  Wrexe,  is  not  only  quite  individual  in 
style  but  the  story  is  told  with  a  most  vivid  sense 
of  that  which  the  realists  are  supposed  to  lack — 
form.  But  there  is  no  sacrifice  of  truth  to  it.  The 
psychology  of  the  characters  rings  true.  The  re- 

[  43  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

action  of  an  unimaginative,  sober,  righteous  family 
to  a  prospective  son-in-law  has  seldom  been  better 
done.  The  story  will  add  to  Mr.  Walpole's  repu- 
tation and  will  not  at  all  suffer  from  the  fact  that 
it  was  written  before  the  war,  as  his  overmodest 
preface  might  indicate  that  he  fears." — Chicago 
Evening  Post. 

"Henry  James  once  said  of  the  author  that  he 
was  'saturated'  with  youth,  and  in  this  story  Wai- 
pole  idealizes  the  triumph  of  the  youth  of  the  new 
generation  that  breaks  the  cords  that  bind  it  to  the 
old  and  starts  out  for  itself — a  careful,  coherent  and 
brilliant  study." — St.  Louis  Globe-Democrat. 

"This  is  a  splendid  study,  the  love  story  is  charm- 
ing and  altogether  the  book  is  an  exceptionally  good 
piece  of  work." — The  New  York  Tribune. 

"In  The  Green  Mirror  Hugh  Walpole  shows  his 
masterly  skill  in  building  up  a  really  dramatic  novel 
out  of  plot  material  that  is  almost  without  action. 
His  crises  are  always  crises  of  feeling  and  no  one 
equals  Mr.  Walpole  in  his  analysis  of  the  feeling 
of  his  characters  and  his  exposition  of  their  motives, 
development  and  change." — Cincinnati  Enquirer. 

"The  Green  Mirror  will  serve  further  to  inten- 
sify the  belief  that  Mr.  Walpole  is  one  of  the  great 
novelists  of  the  time.  The  reviewer  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  proclaim  the  conviction  that  he  will  be  the 
greatest  novelist  of  his  generation  who  uses  English 
as  the  medium  of  his  expression." — Providence 
Journal. 

(  44  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

"Mr.  Walpole  has  written  a  most  unusual  story 
and  has  handled  it  in  an  exceedingly  capable  man-^ 
ner.  His  plot  is  so  out  of  the  ordinary  and  is  so 
well  worked  out  that  The  Green  Mirror  may  well 
be  classed  as  an  exceptional  novel  and  as  such  is 
likely  to  rank  high  among  the  fiction  of  the  present 
years." — Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 

"As  a  picture  of  contemporary  life,  the  novel  con- 
tains some  elements  that  are  as  fundamental  as 
those  which  make  Dickens  characters  of  old  Lon- 
don real  flesh  and  blood  to  readers  of  today.  As  a 
study  in  motives  animating  society  the  book  is 
worthy  the  best  traditions  of  English  literature. 
The  Green  Mirror  is  a  distinct  contribution  to 
literature." — Detroit  News  Tribune. 

"The  Green  Mirror  has  not  one  touch  of  aniline 
in  all  its  warm  colors,  rich  presences  and  faithful 
portraiture.  It  is  a  fine  novel,  grappling  bravely 
with  the  great  ironies  of  mother-love." — New  Re- 
public. 

"In  the  development  and  disclosure  of  the  essen- 
tial and  incidental  scenes  of  the  domestic  embroil- 
ment following  upon  disclosure  of  the  central  situ- 
ation Walpole  vindicates  his  title  to  the  primacy  in 
the  ranks  of  British  fictionists  who  have  undertaken 
to  represent  imaginatively  the  source,  spirit  and  out- 
come of  insularity  translated  in  terms  of  selfishness 
and  family  pride.  It  is  life  transcribed  as  inexora- 
ble and  fatalistic  as  Fortitude  and  Duchess  of 
Wrext." — Philadelphia  North  American. 

[  45  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 
FORTITUDE 

THE  novel  which  first  introduced  Walpole  to 
America  was  Fortitude,  that  most  beautiful, 
most  strong  story  of  a  man's  fight  against  heredity 
and  circumstance  for  mastery  over  himself.  The 
theme  of  the  book  lies  in  a  saying  of  the  Cornish 
fisherman,  old  Frosted  Moses:  "  'Tisn't  life  that 
matters,  but  the  courage  you  bring  to  it." 

Peter  Westcott,  son  of  the  black  and  sullen  gen- 
erations of  Scaw  House,  heard  Frosted  Moses  say 
that,  as  he,  a  tiny  little  boy,  crouched  in  a  chimney 
corner  at  the  old  inn  and  heard  the  sages  talk  of 
ancient  Cornish  legends,  and  of  the  glory  of  the 
great  world  without.  So  did  he  imbibe  a  spirit  of 
adventure  which  he  never  lost. 

He  left  Scaw  House  and  his  gloomy  father, 
fought  his  way  through  school,  through  the  welter 
of  a  London  boarding-house,  through  poverty  and 
failure  to  success  as  a  novelist.  But  his  struggle 
and  his  success  were  not  the  poor  desire  for  petty 
fame  which  many  conventional  heroes  of  fiction  re- 
gard as  struggle.  What  he  desired  in  life  was  forti- 
tude, not  headlines;  the  power  to  face  failure  as 
well  as  the  ability  to  become  known.  The  spirit 
of  adventure,  humanity,  these  ever  stirred  him,  and 
he  lost  neither  in  becoming  a  victor. 

Of  the  woman  who  loved  Peter  and  the  woman 
whom  Peter  loved,  Walpole  makes  a  magnificent 

[  46  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

% 

love  story.  There  were  many  hours  of  dramatic 
misunderstanding  in  the  passion  that  sprang  up  be- 
tween the  solid,  broad-shouldered  Peter,  with  his 
quiet  desire  to  write  and  be  friendly  toward  all 
sorts  of  people,  and  Clare,  the  slender,  nervous,  gay, 
red-haired  girl  who  had  always  been  protected.  But 
there  was  a  great  and  beautiful  wonder  of  passion 
as  well;  and  the  happiness  of  the  little  London 
house  to  which  they  returned  from  the  honeymoon 
is  not  to  be  forgotten. 

And  throughout  there  are  very  many  people  who 
are  not  to  be  forgotten — Stephen,  the  Cornishman, 
huge  and  bearded  and  bewildered  and  inarticulate, 
loving  the  youngster  Peter  and  the  girl  he  could 
not  have,  tramping  the  hard  white  roads  of  Eng- 
land, an  outcast  for  love;  Zanti,  the  "foreigner," 
always  a-quiver  with  babbling  excitement  over  some 
new  adventure  on  whose  trail  he  was  following; 
quiet  Norah,  untidy  and  pale,  yet  burning  with  a 
love  which  gave  back  his  fortitude  to  Peter  when 
it  seemed  lost;  Cardillac,  the  elegant;  Galleon,  the 
great  novelist;  the  kiddies  who  adored  big  Peter; 
Peter's  own  son,  whom  he  so  terribly  loved. 

It  is  a  marvellous  gallery,  and  more  marvellous, 
even,  is  the  gallery  of  scenes,  not  painted  in  long 
and  laborious  descriptions,  but  in  quick  snatches, 
which  show  the  fact  that  Walpole  watches  sky  and 
wind  and  tree  as  does  no  other  novelist. 

Do  you  not  come  from  the  heart  of  dusty  coun- 
[  47  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

try  back  to  the  sea  again  as  you  read  this?  If  you 
do  not,  then  you  do  not  love  the  sea,  whose  very 
breath  is  here  in  this  description  from  Fortitude: 

"They  were  at  the  top  of  the  hill  now.  The  sea 
broke  upon  them  with  an  instant  menacing  roar. 
Between  them  and  this  violence  there  was  now  only 
moorland,  rough  with  gorse  bushes,  uneven  with 
little  pits  of  sand,  scented  with  sea  pinks,  with  stony 
tracks  here  and  there  where  the  moonlight  touched 
it." 

Put  this  with  the  first  lines  in  Maradick  at  Forty 
and  you  have  a  whole  seaside  holiday: 

"The  gray  twilight  gives  to  the  long,  pale 
stretches  of  sand  the  sense  of  something  strangely 
unreal.  As  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  it  curves  out 
into  the  mist,  the  last  vanishing  garments  of  some 
fleeing  ghost.  The  sea  comes  smoothly,  quite  si- 
lently, over  the  breast  of  it;  there  is  a  trembling 
whisper  as  it  catches  the  highest  stretch  of  sand  and 
drags  it  for  a  moment  down  the  slope;  then,  with  a 
little  sigh,  creeps  back  again  a  defeated  lover." 

Or,  if  you  will  have  the  soul  of  the  gay  city,  here 
it  is  in  a  quotation  from  Fortitude: 

"The  street  stirred  with  the  pattering  of  dogs 
out  for  an  airing.  The  light  slid  down  the  sky — 
voices  rang  in  the  clear  air  softly  as  though  the 
dying  day  besought  them  to  be  tender.  The  col- 
ours of  the  shops,  of  the  green  trees,  of  slim  and 
beautifully  dressed  houses,  were  powdered  with 

[  48  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

gold-dust;  the  church  in  Sloane   Square  began   to 
ring  its  bells." 

But  it  is  not  so  much  beautiful  imagery,  not  so 
much  interesting  people,  that  distinguish  Fortitude 
and  make  it  a  great-hearted  book,  as  the  courage  for 
life,  the  demand  for  fortitude. 

"Fortitude  is  a  book  in  which  the  writer  has  put 
much  passionate  intensity  of  thought  and  convic- 
tion. It  has  no  faults  of  insincerity,  weakness,  nor 
poverty  of  mind  or  heart.  It  is  fascinating.  It  is 
the  expression  of  a  born  writer.  One  reads  it  all. 
There  is  humor,  there  is  generosity;  as  of  some  big 
man  overflowing  with  ideas.  There  is  a  noble  spirit 
in  the  book  that  blows  fresh  upon  one,  like  a  wind 
from  the  sea.  The  wind  may  have  blown  through 
desperate  places  and  seen  bitter  things,  but  it  is 
clean  and  bracing,  and  one  is  glad  of  it." — Hilde- 
garde  Hawthorne  in  The  New  York  Times. 

"Fortitude  is  a  story  that  one  will  like  to  linger 
over  after  it  is  read.  It  is  reminiscent  of  Thackeray 
at  his  best,  mellowed  with  the  charity  of  well-pro- 
portioned truth." — New  York  American. 

"Fortitude  is  impressive.  Its  revelations  of  life 
strike  deeply  into  those  springs  of  youth  from  which 
are  filled  the  wells  of  manhood." — The  New  York 
World. 

"This  novel  is  a  genuine  performance.  All  is 
worked  out  in  the  finest  detail,  like  the  careful  etch- 

[  49  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

ing  of  a  great,  stone-made  cathedral." — The  Chi- 
cago Evening  Post. 

"Hugh  Walpole  is  a  literary  force  to  be  reck- 
oned with.  He  knows  life;  he  is  not  afraid  to  de- 
pict it.  He  can  be  sympathetic  without  being  sen- 
timental. He  is  afraid  neither  of  pleasure  nor  pain 
— nor  of  seeming  to  fear  the  conventionalities.  He 
has  the  true  idea  of  romance.  He  knows  that  the 
enchanted  land  of  adventure  may  be  found  in  a 
London  boarding  house  as  surely  as  on  stormy  seas 
or  in  deep  hidden  gold  mines.  He  knows  that 
man's  fiercest  battles  seldom  are  fought  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  cannon.  He  knows  that  loneliness 
is  one  of  the  hardest,  one  of  the  most  universal  of 
humanity's  tests  and  sorrows.  Fortitude  is  a  book 
to  read  more  than  once,  to  ponder.  Instinct  with 
life  and  vigor,  lovers  of  sentiment,  fighting,  psy- 
chology, romance,  realism,  each  will  find  it  worth 
while." — The  Chicago  Record-Herald. 

"Fortitude  is  a  book  of  splendid  strength  and  sig- 
nificance. It  is  done  with  much  care  for  workman- 
ship and  with  a  large  understanding  of  the  meaning 
of  life,  so  proving  doubly  worth  while.  .  .  . 
Throughout  the  book  is  marked  by  a  penetrating 
knowledge  of  humanity,  so  that  it  brings  one  con- 
tinually into  touch  with  real  people  and  real  human 
crises." — The  Continent. 

"Mr.  Hugh  Walpole  has  the  faculty  of  infusing 
vibrant  life  into  his  characters  in  fiction,  and  in 

[  50  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

Fortitude  he  presents  one  of  the  strongest  and  best 
novels  of  the  season." — The  Baltimore  Sun. 

"The  people  here  are  as  real  as  life.  The  theme 
is  big.  The  movement  is  controlled  and  steady,  a 
leisurely  movement,  as  stories  that  deal  with  char- 
acter rather  than  action  must  be.  The  sketches  of 
London,  in  their  whimsically  personal  note,  make 
one  think  of  Dickens  in  the  same  field.  The  whole 
is  big  in  every  sense.  One  of  the  two  or  three  or 
maybe  four  novels  of  the  year  that  will  live  to  cele- 
brate even  a  single  birthday." — The  Washington 
Evening  Star. 

"There  is  not  a  dull  page  in  the  book.  Its  people 
are  real  flesh  and  blood  beings,  with  courage,  with 
love  and  with  humor  in  their  souls.  All  of  them 
are  interesting,  while  the  circumstances  which  sur- 
round them  in  Fortitude  increase  the  delight  of  the 
many  readers  the  book  is  certain  to  achieve." — The 
Boston  Globe. 

"The  book  is  full  of  thought.  Mr.  Walpole  has 
written  a  chapter  of  life,  pure  and  simple.  The 
reader  cannot  skip  one  page." — The  Philadelphia 
Public  Ledger. 

"Fortitude  is  a  great  book.  It  marks  the  arrival 
of  Hugh  Walpole  as  a  novelist  to  be  reckoned  with. 
We  will  await  further  performance  with  an  an- 
ticipation like  that  with  which  we  look  forward  to 
a  new  Five  Towns  tale  by  Bennett." — Norma 
Bright  Carson  in  Book  News  Monthly. 

[  51  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

"One  of  the  remarkable  novels  of  the  year.  This 
is  a  great  book." — The  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"This  book  of  humor,  romance,  and  realism  is  a 
pasan  of  youth  and  strength  and  love,  a  valiant  and 
bracing  sermon." — The  Nashville  Tennessean. 

THE    DUCHESS    OF   WREXE 

WALPOLE'S  constantly  increasing  perception 
of  the  breadth  and  dignity  of  the  world  has 
given  to  The  Duchess  of  Wrexe:  A  Romantic  Com- 
mentary a  spaciousness,  a  universality  which  make 
it  apply  to  the  big  problems  of  today  wherever 
found — yet  his  ceaseless  interest  in  human  nature 
keep  it  a  pleasant  tale  to  read,  with  a  surge  of 
power. 

It  is  the  story  of  the  second  generation's  struggle 
for  freedom,  for  the  right  to  think  and  grow  and 
love  and  form  social  circles  as  it  wills,  against  the 
tradition  which  commends  them  to  do  as  tradition 
wills.  It  is  the  struggle  which  is  identical  all  over 
the  world,  whether  in  London  or  San  Francisco, 
Paris  or  Peking.  It  is  the  struggle  which  expresses 
itself  in  feminism,  in  changing  art,  in  growing 
rationalism  of  manner  and  speech  and  thought. 

The  Duchess  of  Wrexe  is  the  autocrat  of  the 
autocrats ;  the  modern  cavalier ;  old,  shriveled,  feeble 
of  body,  but  keen  of  eye  as  ever,  with  her  cynical 
wit  and  sophisticated  manner  unchanged,  who  until 
she  is  dead  will  never  give  up  her  fight  to  keep  the 

[  52  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

race  of  cavaliers  ruling  the  nation,  to  keep  the  de- 
spised race  of  ordinary  people  (especially  the  nou- 
veau  riche)  in  their  places.  From  her  darkened 
rooms,  where  she  sits  in  a  great  chair  with  grim 
china  dragons  on  either  side,  she  plots  against  the 
spread  of  democracy  shrewdly,  ruthlessly,  cease- 
lessly. 

The  spirit  of  the  times  is  proving  too  much  for 
the  Duchess.  But  she  fights  on.  However  glad 
the  reader  may  be  of  the  defeat  of  all  the  tyranny 
for  which  the  Duchess  stands,  he  cannot  but  be 
touched  by  her  plucky  fight  and  the  grim  persistence 
of  her  cynical  wit. 

It  may  be  mentioned  that  Walpole  does  not,  like 
many  writers,  draw  on  imagination  entirely  for  his 
pictures  of  aristocracy  and  smart  society.  Essential 
democrat  though  he  is,  Hugh  Walpole  is  the  cousin 
of  the  Earl  of  Orford,  the  son  of  a  bishop,  and  a 
descendant  of  the  famous  prime  minister,  Sir  Robert 
Walpole. 

" The  Duchess  of  Wrexe  is  a  wonderful  piece  of 
creative  character  study.  There  is  a  maturity,  a 
sureness  of  touch  in  the  book  that  marks  the  man 
who  knows  just  what  he  can  do  with  his  medium 
and  does  it  enthusiastically  and  well." — Book  News 
Monthly. 

"A  definite  and  notable  addition  to  English  let- 
ters is  made  when  a  new  novel  by  Hugh  Walpole 

[  53  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

is  published.  His  latest  book,  The  Duchess  of 
Wrexe,  deals  on  large  elemental  lines  with  the  rest- 
less, changing  spirit  of  the  time.  To  the  strange 
medley  of  modern  life  the  novelist's  powers  of  in- 
vention, description  and  characterization  are  highly 
addressed.  His  spirited  and  finished  portrayal  of 
one  phase  of  the  changing  social  order  exemplifies 
finely  and  naturally  the  picturesque  realism  of  new- 
century  romance." — Philadelphia  North  American. 

"The  Duchess  of  Wrexe  stimulates  thought  and 
encourages  reflection.  It  contains  a  multitude  of 
ideas  and  it  also  allows  the  reader  to  think  for  him- 
self. It  is  energetic  and  vigorous  without  being 
truculent;  it  sets  forth  social  conditions  without 
being  polemic.  It  is  genuinely  a  story,  and  it  is  at 
the  same  time  a  suggestive  commentary  on  life.  On 
every  page  it  dignifies  the  art  of  the  novelist.  .  .  . 
With  all  his  subtlety,  with  all  his  restraint,  with 
all  his  ingenuity  in  making  it  a  social  study,  Mr. 
Walpole  has  not  made  The  Duchess  of  Wrexe  any 
the  less  effective  as  a  story.  It  is  a  novel  that  en- 
tertains, that  charms.  On  a  single  page  of  it  will 
be  found  more  about  mankind  and  life  than  is  dis- 
coverable in  the  entirety  of  many  another  novel. 
.  .  .  He  has  lavished  upon  it  ideas,  situations, 
events  and  characters  sufficient  for  the  lifework  of 
numerous  other  novelists." — Boston  Transcript. 

"Those  who  take  Mr.  Walpole's  work  as  a  plain 
story  will  find  it  of  compelling  interest.  Those 

[  54  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

who  read  its  message  complete  will  be  impressed 
by  the  sense  of  a  great  theme  thoughtfully  and  pow- 
erfully presented.  There  is  no  flattery  in  the  state- 
ment that  this  book  is  one  of  the  really  great  pieces 
of  modern  fiction." — New  York  World. 

"All  the  grim,  unyielding  pride  of  race  of  Eng- 
land's old  autocracy  is  made  incarnate  in  the  per- 
sonality of  one  aged  woman,  the  ever-dominating 
title-character  in  this  admirable  study  of  changing 
social  orders.  It  is  a  heroic  picture  that  the  author 
paints  of  this  grim  old  head  of  the  house  of  Beamin- 
ster.  She  stands  out  supreme  amid  the  pages,  one 
of  the  most  notable  figures  put  into  a  book  in  a 
long  time." — Philadelphia  Press. 

"Walpole  has  strengthened  his  claim  to  position 
by  proving  that  he  is  not  a  man  of  one  book,  for 
The  Duchess  of  Wrexe  is  without  doubt  one  of  the 
big  novels  of  the  year.  It  is  a  novel  of  extreme 
significance." — Samuel  Abbott  in  The  Boston  Post. 

THE   GOLDEN    SCARECROW 

TF  you  love  enough  we  are  with  you  everywhere 
•*•  — forever" — that  is  the  word  of  the  little  chil- 
dren that  stupid  people,  call  "dead."  Always  here, 
playing  in  the  room  they  loved.  Such  is  the  end 
of  The  Golden  Scarecrow,  the  most  original  book 
by  the  author  of  Fortitude.  It  is  the  story  of  a 
dozen  children  living  about  a  spacious  old  square, 

[  55  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

a  square  filled  with  leisure  and  the  sound  of  leaves, 
in  the  heart  of  London.  The  son  of  a  duke  is  one, 
and  one  the  forlornly  playing  child  of  a  housekeeper 
who  drank  and  was  untidy,  but  their  lives  were  all 
bound  together  by  the  Friend — who  is  the  Friend 
of  Stevenson's  child-verses — who  in  dangerous  or 
unhappy  moments  comes  to  children  and  with  his 
great  warm  arm  guides  them.  .  .  .  There  is  a 
wonderful  fancifulness  in  The  Golden  Scarecrow, 
a  mellow  and  gentle  beauty;  and  a  really  remarka- 
ble ability  to  enter  into  the  children's  own  world, 
where  carpets  are  vast  moors,  and  the  fire  whispers 
secrets,  and  the  lashing  out  of  a  whip  of  wind  sug- 
gests things  vast  and  secret  and  perilous.  Mr.  Wai- 
pole  has  "loved  enough";  has  so  loved  children  and 
the  little  land  of  the  imagination  that  he  has  put 
into  this  book  the  quality  which  can  never  be  quite 
plumbed — tenderness.  And  it  is  not  the  awkward 
tenderness  of  the  person  not  born  to  write;  but 
graceful  and  perfect  and  winning  as  a  Greek  vase. 

"The  fact  that  childhood  is  not  a  mere  prelude 
to  adult  life  but  worth  while  for  its  own  sake  has 
seldom  been  more  beautifully  expressed." — Chicago 
Evening  Post. 

"Few  adults  preserve  their  line  of  communica- 
tion with  that  world  of  fancy  so  real  to  children. 
But  when  one  of  rare  fancy  visualizes  it  a  chord  of 
kinship  is  struck;  memory  rolls  back  the  years,  and 

[  56  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

the  heart  responds.  Barrie  did  it  in  The  Little 
White  Bird.  Hugh  Walpole  joins  him  with  The 
Golden  Scarecrow" — Boston  Herald. 

"Only  those  readers  of  Mr.  Walpole's  novels 
who  have  missed  any  real  sense  of  them  will  be 
surprised  by  this  singularly  attractive  series  of 
sketches.  There  is  an  infinite  pathos  and  a  quite 
exquisite  charm  in  the  first  sketch,  the  one  which 
suggests  the  spirit  of  them  all.  ...  It  cannot  be 
too  strongly  insisted  upon  that  in  these  child-studies 
there  is  not  a  whiff  of  the  psuedo-sentiment  about 
childhood  which  in  some  writings  has  reached  the 
nauseating  point.  Mr.  Walpole  simply  has  the  very 
rare  gift  of  actually  getting  the  child's  point  of 
view,  and  we  always  feel  that  he  really  understands 
what  he  is  talking  about." — Providence  Journal. 

"In  one  sense  it  bears  kinship  to  Barrie's  Peter 
Pan  and  Maeterlink's  Blue  Bird,  for  although  it 
is  unlike  either  of  these  fairy  tales  in  material  and 
treatment,  it  is  related  to  them  in  that  it  recreates 
for  older  readers  the  magical  world  of  the  imagi- 
nation that  plays  so  large  a  part  in  the  lives  of 
little  folk.  Mr.  Walpole  writes  with  charm  and 
tenderness." — Philadelphia  Press. 

"It  is  as  beautiful  as  it  is  unusual — a  wonderfully 
sympathetic  and  illuminating  study  of  the  mind  of 
the  child  done  with  an  understanding  and  sympathy 
so  complete  that  it  is  uncanny." — New  York  Even- 
ing Mail. 

(  57  ] 


W 


HUGH    WALPOLE 
THE   WOODEN    HORSE 

ITH  hesitation  one  approaches  the  first  novel 
of  an  author  whose  growth  has  been  so  steady 
as  that  of  Walpole.  It  is  therefore  a  double  de- 
light to  find  The  Wooden  Horse  a  thoroughly  good 
story.  Indeed,  it  has  in  it  certain  qualities  which 
should,  as  Walpole's  work  becomes  more  and  more 
known  in  mass,  be  one  of  his  most  popular.  For  it 
is  filled  with  the  youth's  first  joy  of  expression;  its 
excitement  about  life  and  its  yearning  for  strange 
new  roads. 

The  Wooden  Horse  is  the  story  of  the  Trojans, 
a  family  which  accepted  as  tranquilly  as  did  the 
Duchess  of  Wrexe  the  belief  that  they  were  the 
people  for  whom  the  world  was  created.  But  when 
Harry  Trojan  came  home  after  twenty  years  in 
New  Zealand,  with  the  democracy  learned  by  work- 
ing his  hands,  he  was  the  "wooden  horse"  who 
boldly  carried  into  the  Trojan  walls  a  whole  army 
of  alien  ideals,  which  made  of  that  egotistic  family 
a  group  of  human  beings  content  to  be  human. 

Interesting  are  his  struggles  against  stubborn 
prejudice;  dreamlike  the  pictures  of  the  old  Trojan 
house,  rising  from  the  edge  of  the  gray  Cornish  cliff 
like  an  older  cliff,  yet  surrounded  by  fragrant  rose 
gardens;  but  what  most  distinguishes  The  Wooden 
Horse  is  its  passionate  adoration  of  the  sea,  the 
cliffs,  the  weather-worn  old  Cornish  houses,  where 

[  58  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

bearded  men  tell  of  haunted  moors  and  the  winds 
of  the  deep. 

"Reading  this  story  after  reading  his  later  ones 
will  not  prove  the  disappointment  that  such  a  pro- 
cedure usually  is.  Here  are  no  signs  of  faults  out- 
grown, no  weaknesses  that  will  hurt  the  lover  of 
Walpole's  later  works — by  which  statement  we  do 
not  wish  to  be  taken  as  denying  that  he  has  devel- 
oped. Mr.  Walpole  is  a  realist  with  a  wide  angle 
vision  to  whom  not  only  the  littered  and  close 
ways  of  short-sighted  and  selfish  men  are  real,  but 
to  whom  the  large  species  of  nature  and  her  heal- 
ing quiet  are  just  as  real.  He  sees  life  steadily 
and  sees  it  whole — yet  keeps  his  temper  and  his 
hopes." — Llwellyn  Jones  in  The  Chicago  Evening 
Post. 

"Nowhere  has  Walpole  shown  a  greater  grip  upon 
life's  realities,  a  stronger  appreciation  of  the  elu- 
siveness  of  man-made  conventionalities  and  a  better 
artistic  sense  of  the  dramatic  value  of  contrasts. 
In  describing  the  subtle  changes  brought  about  in 
the  family  circle  by  the  presence  of  one  outside 
influence,  Walpole  has  displayed  much  skill  and 
literary  power.  There  are  no  long  disquisitions,  no 
democratic  preachments,  but  his  dramatic  personae, 
when  brought  face  to  face  with  new  situations,  are 
moved  to  action  according  to  their  light.  This  is 
one  of  the  very  best  novels  from  the  pen  of  Mr. 

[  59  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

Walpole,  and  that  is  saying  much." — Philadelphia 
Public  Ledger. 

"A  most  notable  piece  of  artistry.  In  Harry 
Trojan,  the  'unrepentant  prodigal,'  Mr.  Walpole 
has  given  us  a  splendid  vigorous  personality  whose 
acquaintance  is  a  delight  to  readers  wearied  by  he- 
roes of  the  type  of  Harry's  semidecadent  son.  The 
picture  of  the  Trojan  family  is  one  which  for 
vividness  could  scarcely  be  surpassed.  And,  indeed, 
Mr.  Walpole  has  scarcely  written  anything  more 
excellent  than  the  account  of  the  dying  of  Sir  Jer- 
emy Trojan — 'I  am  going,  but  I  don't  regret  any- 
thing— your  sins  are  experience — and  the  greatest 
sin  of  all  is  not  having  any.'  That,  in  a  sense,  is 
the  motto  of  the  book.  The  Wooden  Horse  is 
one  of  the  few  novels  which  not  only  may  be  read, 
but  must  be  read  by  the  discriminating  reader." — 
Providence  Journal. 

"If  one  wishes  to  read  a  good  story  without  being 
preached  at,  he  can  do  no  better  than  read  The 
Wooden  Horse.  The  story  catches  the  atmosphere 
of  the  Cornish  coast,  and  you  have  the  feel  of  the 
salt  spray  in  your  nostrils  as  you  read." — Indian- 
apolis News. 

"As  delicate  a  piece  of  work  as  any  modern  nov- 
elist has  attempted  and  superlatively  well  done." — 
Lexington  Kentucky  Herald. 

(  60  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 
THE    GODS    AND    MR.    PERRIN 

HUGH  WALPOLE  spent  some  time  as  a 
master  at  an  English  provincial  school,  and 
consequently  he  has  been  able  to  put  into  The  Gods 
and  Mr.  Perrin  quite  all  the  atmosphere  of  a  school 
where  the  system,  the  confinement,  the  routine  of 
petty  tasks  get  on  everyone's  nerves  and  turn  a 
group  of  human  beings  into  strange  hybrids  that 
are  at  once  machines  and  animals  with  raw  nerves 
sticking  out  all  over  them.  Whoever  has — whether 
in  the  confinement  of  a  school  or  an  unhappy  office 
or  a  jarring  household — been  smothered  by  the  at- 
mosphere of  some  set  of  human  beings,  will  find 
himself  in  this  book,  and  rejoice  with  Perrin's  fight 
to  break  free. 

The  Gods  and  Mr.  Perrin  finds  Mr.  Perrin  com- 
ing back  to  the  workhouse-like  school  for  boys  at 
the  beginning  of  term-time,  determined  to  be  kind 
this  year.  But  the  drudgery,  the  smell  of  cold  mut- 
ton and  chalk,  the  endless  succession  of  frightened 
boys,  the  smug  ironies  of  the  reverend  head-master, 
get  on  his  nerves,  and  then  the  Cat  of  Cruelty  be- 
gins to  whisper  at  his  ear  and  suggest  that  it  would 
be  pleasant  to  twist  one  boy's  ear  and  cuff  another. 

He  bursts  out,  at  last,  gloriously,  and  at  a  solemn 
gathering  of  the  school  for  the  awarding  of  prizes, 
tells  what  he  really  thinks  of  the  hypocritical  head- 
master and  the  drab  futility  of  the  whole  school. 

[  61  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

Uncompromisingly,  unflinchingly,  Walpole  has 
painted  that  school  as  it  is.  His  picture  should  be 
enough  to  make  any  head-master  who  still  believes 
in  education  by  repression  go  off  and  commit  sui- 
cide. It  should  be  enough  to  make  any  man  who 
is  yearly  growing  more  choked,  more  afraid  of  life, 
more  smothered  in  a  stuffy  environment,  rebel  and 
fight  his  way  out  of  that  kingdom  of  dullness,  cost 
what  it  may. 

But  because  of  that  very  spirit  of  revolt,  The 
Gods  and  Mr.  Perrin  is  not  a  drably  disagreeable 
novel  which  will  frighten  off  soft-minded  readers. 

"Marked  by  technical  excellence,  insight,  imag- 
ination, and  beauty — Walpole  at  his  best." — San 
Francisco  Bulletin. 

"The  psychological  crisis  in  the  life  of  a  school- 
master, uncouth,  unhappy  and  unloved,  is  keenly 
analyzed  by  the  hand  of  a  master.  The  hysteria 
that  attacks  the  faculty  of  a  boys'  school  at  exam- 
ination time  has  never  been  so  well  described  as  in 
the  moving  chronicle  of  the  'Battle  of  the  Umbrella' 
which  proves  that  Mr.  Walpole  has  the  crowning 
gift  of  humor." — The  Independent. 

THE    PRELUDE    TO    ADVENTURE 

SO  excellent  is  the  versatility  of  Hugh  Walpole 
that  this  writer  of  dignified  and  realistic  and 
always  beautiful  pictures  of  life  has  among  his  books 
one  with  all  the  tension  and  strange  plot  of  a  Poe 
[  62  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

masterpiece — The  Prelude  to  Adventure.  It  starts 
with  a  murder.  Dune  the  silent,  the  cleverest  yet 
laziest  and  most  snobbish  man  in  his  class  at  Cam- 
bridge, has  struck  down  a  red-faced,  silly,  ignoble, 
beast  of  an  undergraduate  who  has  been  boasting 
of  his  conquest  over  a  poor  little  shopgirl.  He  did 
not  mean  to  do  murder,  but  there  lay  the  man  dead, 
where  the  gray  Druids'  Wood  dripped  with  rain 
and  gray  twilight. 

He  calmly  went  back  to  his  rooms  and  kept  silent. 
What  happened  is  so  filled  with  suspense  that,  very 
real  and  human  though  it  is,  the  plot  comes  to  have 
all  the  unexpectedness  of  the  cleverest  detective 
story.  And  Dune's  vision  of  God,  as  a  great  gray 
spirit  standing  gigantic  there  on  the  campus,  wait- 
ing, waiting,  is  a  revelation  in  spiritual  motives. 
Dune's  love  story,  too,  is  fascinating — and  his  vic- 
tory. 

Suspense — color  of  life — love — fear — triumph — 
they  all  mingle  in  an  atmosphere  as  effective  as 
the  Cornish  sea. 

"A  powerful  novel  of  Cambridge  life,  or  rather 
the  story  of  a  Cambridge  student  with  the  univer- 
sity sketched  in  with  rapid  and  sure  strokes  as  a 
place  through  which  Dune's  tragic  and  lonely  fig- 
ure moves.  The  sentiment  is  lofty  and  manly — 
Hugh  Walpole  walks  with  a  sure  and  firm  tread 
toward  a  definite  goal." — The  Independent. 

(  63  ] 


HUGH    WALPOLE 

MARADICK  AT   FORTY 

THE  theme  of  Maradick  at  Forty  again  gets 
into  the  life  of  every  man  and  every  woman ; 
a  theme  equally  timely  in  1000  B.C.,  1000  A.D.  and 
10000  A.D. — the  question  of  what  is  to  be  done 
when  a  man  wakes  up  to  find  himself  getting  al- 
most old,  with  life  slipping  from  him  to  the  next 
generation.  One  may  smile  at  the  white  slave  ter- 
ror, and  be  quite  selfish  as  regards  educational  move- 
ments, but  one  cannot  smile  away  the  progress  of 
one's  self  from  the  forties  into  the  fifties. 

Maradick,  strong,  large,  well-bred,  a  capable 
stock  broker,  awakes  at  forty  to  find  that  life  has 
eluded  him.  He  has  married  respectably — his  fussy 
little  wife  does  not  love  him.  His  children  are 
dutiful — they  are  not  admiring.  His  business  is 
safe — it  is  not  absorbing. 

While  spending  the  summer  at  the  "Man  at 
Arms,"  that  marvelous  dark  old  inn  with  unex- 
pected bits  of  gardens  and  tower  rooms  rambling 
over  the  Cornwall  cliffs  and  fronting  a  vast  sweep 
of  sea  and  sky,  he  meets  with  a  young  man  to  whom 
life  and  poetry  are  real,  to  whom  women  and  seas 
are  "bully!  marvelous!"  The  youngster's  youth  stirs 
Maradick  to  demand  that  he  no  longer  be  taken 
for  granted  by  wife  and  children  and  business — and 
life!  He  plunges  into  a  spiritual  adventure  which 
is  the  Adventure  of  Everyman. 

[  64  ] 


THE   NOVELS   OF   HUGH   WALPOLE 

THE  SECRET  CITY  Net  $1.75 

THE  DARK  FOREST  Net  $1.50 

JEREMY  Net  $1.75 

THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW  Net  $1.50 

THE  GREEN  MIRROR  Net  $1.75 

THE  DUCHESS  OF  WREXE  Net  $1.75 

FORTITUDE  Net  $1.75 

THE  PRELUDE  TO  ADVENTURE  Net  $1.50 

MARADICK  AT  FORTY  Net  $1.50 

THE  GODS  AND  MR.  PERRIN  Net  $1.50 

THE  WOODEN  HORSE  Net  $1.50 


GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY,  Publishers 
244  Madison  Avenue  NEW  YORK 

[  65  ] 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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